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Two Linked Stories

There are a number (at least) two ark-like anomalies on Mount Ararat. The initial story on the CIA and satellite photos of an ark-like anomaly (the "Taylor Site")is described on Noahsark1 and Noahsark4.html. Apparently, the problem with that site is that it appears to be too big! The McGivern expedition which is highlighted on the prior page is an entirely different site than the "Taylor" site. Clifford Paiva, a physicist and former image specialist for the U.S. Navy, analysed the initial declassified photos of the anomaly.Mr. Paiva now works in private industry for BSM Associates, a research company he co-founded and is living in Southern California with his wife and two children. Recently, Mr. Paiva provided us with additional information on the Mount Ararat anomaly.

Clifford Paiva Yes... I am very interested in the establishment of the exact location of the Ark...REASON: The world needs to know its origin, its current position, and where it is going. The Ark represents the physical evidence of the existence God and His relationship with his Creation...and on His terms alone. S8int.com The Ikonos/satellite photos that started the whole thing. If you have continued to follow the story, how confident are you that the anomaly is the ark? Clifford Paiva The anomaly on Ararat, according to my analysis at least, indicates an object which may be of cultural (human) origin...although geologic etiology cannot be excluded. The Anomaly is probably not the Ark, due primarily to the lack of spatial consistency with the Biblical account of a rectangular barge...some 300x50x30 cubits...and an assumption of 22-25 inches per cubit. The objects on Ararat are twice that size. Even given the hyperbaric pressures in a pre-deluvian environment...still, the spatial extent of the Anomaly challenges even the Ark. Dr. Porcher Taylor of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC and also international law professor at the University of Richmond, asked me to help in the image processing work in 1997. Porcher is convinced that the Anomaly is Noah's Ark. Also there are folks from National Reconnisance Office (NRO), also in DC, who similarly refer to the Anomaly as a "ship"....referring in particlular to the apparent hydrodynamic shape (tear-drop) of the object...and as viewed from some photos released by CIA-NIMA (National Image Mapping Agency) to Porcher under the Freedom of Information Act. The Anomaly may be connected to the activities on the volcanoe before Ham, Sham and Japheth and their children left the plateau. The water levels were very high and therefore atmospheric pressures and temperatures were commensurately high near the Ark. The folks on the mountain would leave the area as the water levels decreased, dropping the atmospheric pressure and temperature. However while on the plateau area of the mountain resources (wood, metals, etc.) carried onboard the Ark would be used for habitation after disembarking. Noah would know of course that this was a requirement before entering the ship. Also Josephus mentions that due to fear, Noah's family did not want to venture too far from the ship. S8int.comOf course, whether they ever find the ark or not will not impact the faith of Christians who believe the flood ocurred because the Bible tells us it did.

Ahmet anomaly negative,Copyright Robin Simmons/George Adams .

Clifford Paiva This is so...however "God said it, I believe it...and this is good enough for me..." is not very useful in convincing people of the untenable premises of evolution...and that in fact the experimental sciences support the Biblical accounts and the Creation model. And in this context I disagree with you respectively, that indeed the faith of Christians will in fact be very much strengthened with the appearance of Noah's Ark. On the Ark Anomalies Included is SCION Image Processing and PhotoShop results for the Ahmet ark-like object. In this connection the first included image is a negative of the original 1989 photo. This is included to display the difference between the Ark Anomaly and Ahmet's photo of another, more likely candidate...and to which McGivern's expedition is heading. Please notice the correct 6:1 length-to-width proportion ratio of the Ahmet Object; and it matches nicely with the Hagopian eyewitness account (front and side views enclosed).See Story Below.I have also included the Mt. Ararat Anomaly's front view...from the 1949 CIA observation.

.... Ahmet Site, Ararat Anomaly

....... Ararat Anomaly

Sightings of the Ark of NOAH

Throughout antiquities and into modern times, individuals and groups of individuals have claimed to have sighted and or been up close and touched the Ark of Noah.

Yet substantiation of these claims in the form of hard evidence remains elusive, but the reports continue. Of the modern day sightings, a few stand out. One of the more intriguing eyewitness accounts of an encounter with the Ark of Noah, comes from an Armenian by the name of George Hagopian. Here is an excerpt of an interview conducted with Mr. Hagopian in 1970. Hagopian Drawing-Side View. He was eight years old, Hagopian said, and it was in the year 1908 when his uncle took him up Ararat, past Ahora Gorge, passing the grave of St. Jacob on the way. As the mountain grew more precipitous his uncle carried him on his shoulders until they came to something that looked like a great ship located on a rock ledge over a cliff and partially covered by snow. It had flat openings like windows along the top and a hole in the roof. Hagopian had first thought it was a house made of stone but when his uncle showed him the outline of planks and told him it was made of wood he realized it was the Ark, just like other people had described it to him. His uncle boosted him up from a rock pile to reach the Ark roof telling him not to be afraid, "because it is a holy ship . . ." (and) "the animals and people are not here now. They have all gone away." Hagopian climbed on the roof and knelt down and kissed the surface of the roof which was flat and easy to stand on. While they stood alongside the Ark his uncle shot into the side of it but the bullets bounced off as if it were made of stone. He then tried to cut off a piece of the wood with a sharp knife and was equally unsuccessful. On this first visit to the Ark they spent two hours there looking at it and eating some of their provisions. When Hagopian returned to his village eager to tell the other boys about his adventure they replied, rather anticlimactically, "Yes, we saw that Ark too." Hagopian died in 1972. Since he was unable to read maps with any accuracy he was unable to pinpoint on a map of the mountain where it was that he had seen and climbed on the Ark. He consistently told his interrogators that if he could get back to Mount Ararat he could lead a party to the Ark. Although his testimony was successfully approved by voice-stress analysis, it is not unusual that reports such as this, from a single person, even if firsthand, have been discredited because of lack of corroboratory evidence from others. But there exists another piece of corroboration connected with Lieutenant (now Captain) Schwinghammer's sighting of a boatlike object on Mount Ararat as observed from an aircraft belonging to the 42Sth Tactical Observation Squadron. In 1983 Schwinghammer had asked an artist friend to draw, under his direction, a sketch of what he had seen before it became too blurred in his memory. Elfred Lee, on his part, while interrogating Hagopian, had drawn a detailed sketch of the reported ship on the mountain which was done in Hagopian's presence and under his direction. Neither Schwinghammer nor Hagopian knew of the other's existence nor of any sketch made of Hagopian's "Ark." Hagopian Drawing-Front View. Captain Schwinghammer had been asked by the author to send a copy of his sketch and, after doing so, Schwinghammer received in the mail almost at the same time and without having requested it the picture of the Lee-Hagopian version. To Schwinghammer's astonishment the two sketches were essentially the same: the Ark was in the same position on the mountain and both pictures showed a rectangular boat or barge on a ledge. When Schwinghammer saw the drawing he said, "That looks just like what I saw. The object had the same angle on the mountain and the position was the same. The only difference is that I did not notice any 'windows' along the top." This is understandable because of the aircraft's speed and altitude and also because the object was partially covered by snow. A number of American pilots saw a shiplike construction protruding from the side of Mount Ararat in the late spring or summer of 1960. These pilots were based at Adana, Turkey, with the 428th Tactical Flight Squadron under the NATO Military Assistance Pact in effect at that time. The pilots had been told about the Ark by the Turkish liaison pilot assigned to them and on several occasions had been guided past Mount Ararat on routine observation flights. These pilots did not have time to make any successful photographs because of their haste to make a quick turn around the mountain before becoming an object of unusual interest by Russian observers on the USSR side of the border. Captain (then Second Lieutenant) Gregor Schwinghammer, now a commercial pilot, was interviewed by the author in 1981 concerning a bargelike object he had seen on Mount Ararat as described in Doomsday, 1999 A.D. He stated that the Turkish liaison officer had accompanied him and another pilot in a counterclockwise swing around Mount Ararat in the course of which they saw "an enormous boxcar or rectangular barge visible in a gully high on the mountain." Captain Schwinghammer specified that it seemed to be banked, indicating that it was not stationary but movable and somehow had become caught there as it slid down the mountain. He remembered that he had later heard at the base club that some pictures had been taken of this object, reputedly by the U-2 pilots prior to the unexpectedly sudden ending of the U-2 program when Gary Powers was brought down over the USSR and captured by Soviet air action. The author, after returning from his own investigative trip to the Ararat area in August 1985, again interviewed Captain Schwinghammer and other former pilots of the 428th Tactical Flight Squadron to ascertain whether some of his memories of the icebound ship on Ararat coincided with other subsequent sightings. Question: What did the other pilots think about what you and they had seen? "We used to talk about it in the bar after flying. Some of the pilots thought it was the Ark and others didn't know what to think. I was not convinced about that but I knew that I had seen a large rectangular building like a barge or a ship high up on the mountain." How far away from the object were you when you saw it? "We were coming down from 5000 feet. I think we were at more like 3000 feet when we sighted it. I remember that we were doing 380 knots. The Turkish liaison pilot said to us, "That's where Noah's Ark is supposed to be. Look! You can see it now!" I estimate that I saw it at a 45° angle. It appeared to be hanging at 45° or 30° degrees down the mountain." Did you take any photographs of it? "No. We were in too much of a hurry. We had two hours of fuel; it took us forty-five minutes to get there in the F-100. We had time enough to make just one pass around the mountain and return. We had to be very careful. The Russians had a radar installation right on the border. A C-130 had recently been shot down. The pilot was a guy named Dick Skiddip." From your memory, where was the object on the mountain ? "You can tell approximately from the map. The point where I place the Ark we saw was about 4000 feet from the top on the southeast slope, perhaps four o'clock from due north." Do you think it would still be there? "I think most of the time it is covered with ice and snow and that we just saw it at a time when part of it was protruding from the snow. I know that I saw a rectangular structure that looked like a ship. It was at a period in time or history and we were there at that time. Other pilots in the squadron remember having taken part in flights over Ararat or having heard that other pilots had seen a shiplike object on the mountain. " Source:whateveristrue.com, Portions are excerpts from the book " The Lost Ship of Noah" by Charles Berlitz